A Serbian herpetologist in Macedonia came across a young
viper - with a centipede sticking out of its abdomen according to a report.
According to NBC News it took Ljiljana Tomovic 10 seconds to
figure out what it was: The snake had swallowed the centipede, which had then
tried to cut a path to freedom … by eating its way out.
Some time during its violent dash, the centipede died.
Perhaps the snake’s venom kicked in - that's Tomovic's best guess.
"Unexpectedly, the mass of the prey was greater than
that of the predator: the viper weighed 4.2 g and the centipede 4.8 g. In
short, the prey constituted 84% of the predator’s trunk length, 112% of its
body width, and 114% of the snake’s body weight.
"A subsequent dissection revealed the absence of the
snake’s visceral organs (i.e. we found
that only the snake’s body wall remained – the entire volume of its body was
occupied by the centipede), which led us to suppose that the prey caused
chemical or mechanical damage to the predator’s digestive organs.
"The young snake gravely underestimated the size and
strength of the centipede," Tomovic wrote in a report.(Times Live).
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